The Ultimate Brand Refresh Checklist
The last 365+ days have radically changed the way we live and do business, which means it’s the perfect time to assess whether you need to refresh your brand.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s review: a refresh is different from a rebrand.
A rebrand develops an entirely new visual identity, which is ideal if your core business has drastically changed or expanded.
A refresh, however, updates your brand to match the current business values, structure, and personality, which can evolve over time due to new initiatives, changing environments, and so on.
A refresh may include:
Updating (but not completely changing) your logo
Tweaking your service offerings and products
Jazzing things up with a new color scheme or font
But if you think it’s time for a refresh, you should really start by reviewing the less obvious pieces of the puzzle—your audience, your messaging, and your SEO.
Customers may not notice all of these elements, but they’re key for a complete and quality brand experience, and can you show opportunities for your business to grow.
Let’s walk through how you can refresh these three vital aspects of your brand, before you start playing around with your logo!
Review Your Ideal Audience
Refreshing your brand starts with identifying key characteristics about your ideal customer or client, and considering their needs and wants. If your current messaging doesn’t appeal to your ideal audience, then you’ve got some work to do.
Start by asking yourself these questions:
What keeps my ideal customer/client awake at night?
What are some of their biggest challenges or pain points right now?
What are they passionate about?
What is one of their secret desires?
What websites and social media channels do they spend the most time on?
What does their daily schedule look like? Especially right now?
What do they like to do with their time off?
What questions are they consistently asking themselves or others?
Think about designing a person who would fit your business perfectly.
Give them a name, a job title, a family structure, and even an estimated salary range.
By putting a name and a face to your ideal customer—even if it’s imaginary—you can create content that speaks directly to that person, at the right time of day, via the right channels.
Pro Tip: Once you’ve identified your ideal customer, draft up a list of their attributes, write a description, and add a photo that fits the description; then print this persona and pin it above your desk for easy reference. Dive deeper into customer personas in this oldie, but goodie, Slice.
Refresh Your Brand Messaging
Once you’ve identified your ideal customer, it’s time to apply that information to how you present your business to them.
That means combing through your website, social media, marketing materials, email marketing, and even your email signatures to make sure they appeal to your ideal customer.
Start with your copy, which should help customers understand and connect with you and your brand.
Do you need to rewrite portions of your website or create entirely new pages?
Does your voice and tone likely resonate with your ideal customer? Does it match how they speak?
What does your current copy communicate about your products or services?
If you’ve updated your services or your products, now is the perfect time to add this to your website with your customer in mind.
And don’t forget… as you update your copy, you will need to look at your visuals — photos AND videos.
Do these need to be updated with new information?
Do the people in your photos reflect what your target customers look like?
Does anything just look wonky, outdated, or bad?
Check out some of our favorite stock image websites here.
Pro tip: Review your proposals and contracts as well! Make sure your internal communication with clients and your team reflect your brand. It’s easy to forget about those, but they can make a big difference in how your customers experience working with you, and when you do it right your business will be more memorable so they’ll be more likely to refer you to a friend.
Rejuvenate Your SEO
SEO isn’t often associated with branding, but it can have a major impact on how people experience your brand online.
For your branding refresh, start with an SEO audit.
You can use a tool like SEMRush or Ubersuggest to crawl your website and gauge its performance. You may find quite a few issues you didn’t know about — like a slow load time or old broken links. Fix these problems before you start adding new content. Stuff like this destroys your customer’s experience!
If you’ve added new items or services to your business, go and revisit your site’s structure. Google ranks sites based on visitor experience, so it’s important to have a user-friendly website. Make sure your latest additions don’t complicate your customer’s experience or confuse them.
Once you’ve audited and optimized your current website and content, redirect your focus to future content. Start by reassessing your keywords. What do you want to rank for on Google? Research one or two keywords to include on each of your webpages — think about what people will type in that search box to find your content.
Last (phew!), update your editorial calendar to include content that covers your new or updated offerings. And don’t forget to include those keywords in your social posts!
Pro Tip: Insert your keywords into a tool like Ubersuggest’s content ideas generator to refresh (hah!) your new editorial calendar.
Treat this activity like spring-cleaning your home: do an annual refresh to spruce up your brand and ensure you’re communicating the best you can with your ideal peeps. Download and save our Brand Refresh Checklist to help you stay on track with this process! 👇